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‘Made in Ohio’
YOUNGSTOWN
With Barack Obama facing criticism for his administration’s policies on coal and natural gas, ex-Gov. Ted Strickland and other local Democratic officials strongly touted the president’s “all-of-the-above” energy strategy.
With V&M Star’s $650 million expansion project behind them, the Democrats heaped praise on Obama, a fellow Democrat, on Thursday as the campaign kicked off its “Made in Ohio” energy tour. The tour will make stops next week throughout Ohio in support of the president’s energy policies.
“We are here to talk about the development of natural gas and the continued investment in clean coal and what that means for jobs and manufacturing right here in the Mahoning Valley,” Strickland said.
Comparing Obama to Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Strickland said: “We benefit from having a president who is focused on how to grow and expand these domestic industries and reduce our reliance on foreign oil and make sure that big oil pays their fair share. What we don’t need is a candidate [Romney] who wants to maintain billions in taxpayer subsidies for big oil that leave us even more dependent on foreign energy sources.”
Cecil Roberts, president of United Mine Workers of America, who supported Obama in the 2008 presidential election, has criticized the president for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations that he and those in the coal industry say make it so expensive to operate a coal-fired power plant that no more will be built, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“This president has adopted a strategy that’s fundamentally hostile to coal workers, businesses and communities,” Christopher Maloney, spokesman for Romney, told The Vindicator on Thursday. Obama’s “had a war on coal. This administration is based on hostility to job creators.”
Maloney pointed to a comment Obama made in January 2008 that “if someone wants to build a coal plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”
Strickland countered that more than 3,100 Ohioans have coal-mining jobs, a 10-percent increase from when Obama took office in January 2009.
Also, the Obama administration has invested about $5 billion in clean-coal technology and improving coal-fired plants, he said.
“I take issue with the conclusion” that Obama is at war with the coal industry. “Some of these plants are old. They haven’t made the investment to get updated.”
Strickland and state Sen. Joe Schiavoni of Boardman, D-33rd, criticized Romney for his record on coal.
They both say Romney opposed the coal industry when he was governor of Massachusetts and now supports it. Just after Romney took office as governor, he said an old coal-fired plant in Salem Harbor, Mass., needed to be closed because “that plant kills people.”
“When he was governor, he was strident and he has accused of waging a war on coal,” Strickland said. “He’s changed his mind on coal, but he’s changed his mind on everything.”
Maloney said Romney was specifically referring to one of the state’s oldest coal plants that was not compliant with state environmental laws, and not the entire coal industry.
Romney has “an all-of-the-above energy strategy,” Maloney said.
As for fracking, a process in which water, chemicals and sand are blasted into rocks thousands of feet below the ground to unlock natural oil and gas, Obama issued an executive order last month to create a federal interagency group to develop a plan for safe gas development. Romney has criticized the president for not being clear on fracking regulations.
Local officials, including Youngstown Councilman Mike Ray, D-4th, pointed to the V&M project — and the $19 million in federal stimulus money given to help the company’s $650 million expansion — as evidence Obama supports natural gas and oil.